Anima Holding SA

BOVESPA:ANIM3

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q3

[Marina Gelman, executive]

On your mark, welcome, we're going to talk about the Earnings Results of the Third Quarter 2021. I'd like to remind you all that we'll have a Q&A session at the end. [Operator Instructions]

If you want to hear this in English, please, there is a link called interpretation, you just click there and choose to go and hear this presentation in English, okay? Be very welcome, please. The presentation in English, you can find here on the chart, there is a link. You just click on it, and you have the same presentation that we will have here in English, so you can hear it through the interpretation.

Very well. I think I have mentioned everything. I've given you all the instructions. Have a great day. I'm going to call Marcelo Battistella Bueno, our CEO, to opening such important webinar to us. Good morning, Marcelo. Welcome.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Good morning, Marina. Good morning, Andre. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for the digital transformation to hold this hybrid event of our earnings result call of our third quarter. Great honor to be here. First of all, I'd like to share a few messages, which I think are very important for this time. The first of them, we're talking about the first complete quarter in which we have consolidated all the institutions from Laureate that we are doing the integration process. This is the first quarter in which we can present an integrated number. And this reinforces increasingly more the power and of this incredible network, the largest quality education and higher education in Brazil. This is very important.

Second message is digital education that opens a new avenue for the Anima Ecosystem. We are integrating a new digital education proposal that will add to our ecosystem, bringing this out above [Foreign Language] even we have the FMU operations that brings us a new opportunity for us to learn, integrate and for us to provide amongst various experiences, a new experience to the market that was not being met by the Anima Ecosystem theoretically. So it is very important to share this message with you.

I would also like to reinstate our Inspirali, our medical vertical. We are reporting a #4 vote greater than last year, an avenue that is increasingly greater and more reported, showing 9,800, almost 10,000 students with 1,600 yearly seats in medicine, reinforcing lifelong learning and the power of this network, which is unique, if you add not only the medical schools within Anima that have been added to Unisul and Laureate. It's a network of medical schools that is unique, covering the main cities and regions in Brazil.

And lastly, I'd like to reinforce our reduction in leverage that is focused work hours saying that we're going to reduce leverage, which catch generation with integration with the synergies that are going to be brought and also with an agenda that we have been conducting of deleveraging selling assets, non-operating assets. And that are not within our core business. And with this, we saw a deleverage of 0.5% point, that is really impressive. With these points to be stressed, well, the numbers speak for themselves. And as a result of this work, work that has been very disciplined with great coordination. Congratulations to this brilliant team.

And I'd like to hand over to Marina, so that we can proceed with our presentation. Marina, up to you.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Thank you very much, Marcelo. Now we're going to start talking about the operating performance of this striking quarter, as Marcelo mentioned. Looking here at the student base, we see this transformational power with acquisitions we go to over 310,000 students in our base growth close to 170%. This obviously includes all the brands integrated in June as well as the acquisitions we've made recently.

It is important to highlight here, as Marcelo said in his opening remarks, the power of digital. To us, is a new growth avenue. It's breaking paradigms. We have fertile soil to explore, to get to know and grow. And later, Andre, will talk about the numbers. As to academic teaching, we've shown the growth only in the organic unit, it is our tools that we have developed in terms of retention in the organic units even during the time that we're living during the pandemic of all kinds of restrictions that people have gone through.

We've witnessed a reduction regarding dropout in the third quarter of 2020. As Marcelo said, this is very gratifying. This is the work of a team with great technology directed by data or data-driven. And in the units being integrated, we have great opportunity, and we see no reason why we shouldn't take the same technologies and the same management of retention that we've performed that you followed in our units and the units that started becoming part of our ecosystem this year.

Moving to intake, we see the growth and intake that is evidently reflecting everything. We're talking about this transformational movement with more than this. In the same campi, comparing the same basis of third quarter 2020, we had this growth of 8.3%. Again, it is still digital scenario. Marcelo will talk a bit about the return to in person. It started in May, June this year.

We're still at a challenging scenario, starting with vaccination. But we had a growth of 8.3% and the same can be. And all the total of the acquisitions, we had an intake greater than ours of 18,000 students. And on digital, almost 17,000 students. So we've had the honor of enrolling 51,379 new students in this new intake process. So this is the dream that we want to fulfill. We want to help transform people to transform the country.

Moving to average ticket, it is important to show that within our units, we continue following this growth trend -- sorry, on all our units, in the integrated units, the organic units, we have this growth excluding acquisitions of 2.4%. This growth, for those of you who have followed, we've been working in a very intense way since 2019. This has to do with the whole change in mindset in the company, involving several initiatives. So we have governance and management with this view towards ticket that is differentiated.

We have technological tools that provide us a more granular view. We have qualified portfolio. We have structured database. All of this, in fact, gives us elements for us to operate in a ways to revert and increase the ticket and lead our brands to the proposal that we have in terms of quality proposal. So we have the opportunity of also doing this in the integration brands.

As we talked about intake, all this change in mindset of placing the brand at a price level that is compatible with its branding and quality is an opportunity that we see in this integration. The integration ticket is good, BRL 970. It's growing. And again, all the change in mindset will help and speed up this growth potential more than this. Distance learning, we notice and digital, we see the ticket always with a slight growth, remembering that the ticket has a different positioning by itself, considering the market that is addressable by this kind of model.

Moving on, I'm going to hand over to Eduardo Garcia, our IR manager, who took over recently. Welcome, Edu. It's your first webinar, always success. Good luck. Go ahead. Up to you.

[Eduardo Garcia, executive]

Thank you, Marina. Good morning, everyone. I'll talk a bit about student loans. The first highlight we can comment here is that the integration units, they came with a smaller exposure regarding loans. We can see both in the part of private loans and public ones, the FIES. And when we evaluate these portfolio exposure, we have a pathway of a possible opportunity of expanding student loans, so that we can somehow encourage and have greater intake of students over time.

And we reduced the overall this space is relevant share of integrated units. Our exposure in public loans, increasingly less dependent on this modality of student loans. And lower exposure, of course.

Moving to academic quality. We have this view with 2019 numbers because the 2020 results have not been disclosed, which we show what we call the indicator of difference between performance and IDD and also the CPC, the preliminary cost constant. So the integrated units presented better academic indicators. In this view, however, according to our history of various units that we've acquired and we're able to improve even though recognized with academic indicators, we believe we have another opportunity of improving and enhancing the academic part of the assets acquired with the June 2021 acquisition. This is a venue of opportunities we envisage in the academic part, increasing and improving our indicators.

With this, I will hand over to Andre Tavares to talk a bit about the financial performance.

[André Tavares, executive]

Okay. Edu, thank you. Thank you, Marina, Marcelo. Can you hear me all right, Edu?

[Eduardo Garcia, executive]

Yes.

[André Tavares, executive]

Excellent. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. It's a great pleasure to be here again talking about our results of our past 9 months results that make us feel very proud and confident based on what we've attained so far.

On our next slide, we can see a significant gain scale in our month in the 9th first month of the year, especially after the transformational acquisition that we made late May. As of June, they became part of our financial statements, the units acquired from Laureate. And we have 4 months, the first complete quarter that is complete with these assets as Marcelo mentioned. So the numbers are superlative.

Net revenue growing over 70%, exceeding BRL 1.8 billion. Gross profit growing at 84% with the margin of over 4 points, exceeding BRL 1.160 billion, and the operating result before our corporate expenses with the performance that even stronger than the growth of revenue itself. Operating results, increasing more than twofold, in absolute terms from BRL 408 million to almost BRL 845 million.

And moving here almost 8 points, 7.8 set points, which is an evolution that is quite significant. It's important to mention here that digital business learning accounts were 3.1. If we look at the number of the course that you have in the release, distance learning is about 5% of the numbers of the third quarter. Even with the coupling of the SMU operation that had a great importance from digital that came from Laureate, even so GL follows its ramp-up growth.

As we're going to mention later to complete this slide, ratify the importance of Inspirali, our medical vertical, in our results, reaching almost 26% and in the quarter, reaching 27% of our revenue. Net revenue in the next slide, we remind you of the segmented view of the blocks of readout.

Now we have the base block. Just going back, slide, please. We have the base block, the units that are having with us for longer period of time with UniBH, [ São Judas ] and UniSociesc and the acquisitions and the specific column for those that came from Laureate, the second block. The third block, which is a lifelong learning. Gathering our initiatives beyond undergraduate. And what we see on our base block is greater difficulty of increasing revenue, despite a better ticket and good results of the initiatives of enrollment, but we have very mature units. As you've seen in the previous slide, that present greater difficulty to have revenue growth.

This revenue growth is not transferred as loss of margin. You see that the margin is relatively stable around 41.5%, even with the drop in increase with the operating deleveraging. We have all the initiatives of E2A of our academic model. We have all the initiatives of scale gains, efficiency gains, making this block to keep a very healthy margin.

No doubt, very positive highlight of the third quarter is the performance of the acquisitions, very significant, reminding you that the acquisitions have well, Inspirali, our medical vertical has a relative importance that is much greater in acquisitions than in the base block. And amongst other factors, this is one important factor for the block of acquisitions operate at a margin higher than the base block, although we see some room in the acquisitions block for the evolution of this margin.

On the next slide, we can see the lifelong learning. This segment is clearly a segment, which we are sort of sowing the seed for the future of the company. We have been paying great attention to it, driving a lot of energy to it because we firmly believe in our strategy that lifelong learning will generate fruits that are especially important to the future of the company and what we see here is that it continues with a revenue level with the acquisition. Units has grown practically 50%. We moved from BRL 60 million to BRL 90 million. And we've had some factors that led to the margin.

This block would not follow the growth, especially investments in the part of infrastructure and digital development, greater investment in the intake of students or acquisition of students and equating our policies of PDA or provision for doubtful accounts that had a relatively negative result. We see revenue is well balanced between graduate studies in all areas and also on the 2 verticals that are most important in this requirement, which is management HSM and HSMu and a brand. The segment is extremely important that we're looking much more towards its scale and the importance it will have in the future of the company. And we have no doubt that they will play a fundamental role as years go by.

On the next slide, we highlight distance learning that has enabled us to add even more value to our ecosystem. Everybody knows that we did not offer distance learning in a considerable scale. As of June, we started having an operation that is very important, getting to a student base between undergraduate and graduate of 83,000 students. We have 57,000 students and almost 27,000 graduate studies. Net revenue getting to BRL 50 million.

And over this period, remind you that basically, we only have 4 months. And with these results and operating margin of 16%, that is still well below what we understand that we can deliver. But as everybody knows, digital teaching or this is what is quite leveraged as we have a ramp-up that is strong in terms of growth, where you can see the numbers we had in the third quarter 2020. Without considering FMU, we see year-over-year growth has been strong from 50,000 to 83,000 students, an evolution that is relatively important in terms of the ticket from previous quarter to now. This one, exceeding the barrier of BRL 200.

[Foreign Language] The process flows actually quite strongly for the margin growth. But here, speaking of distance learning, we had to talk about the partnership that we set with Vivo, the joint venture is the beginning, and we're thinking about it as a start-up, and it's a joint venture that is 50/50. It's a start-up that has an infinity of possibilities. And the possibilities simply have not all been listed here.

We're going to learn and create new possibilities over the next year. I have no doubt in the strong partnership with Vivo, especially in this part of nano-continuous learning courses that is so important for lifelong learning and areas that are very specific as the data science programming, AI, exploring all the beauty and power of the 2 ecosystems, Anima's and Vivo's ecosystems that does not require introduction. It is a leader of telecommunication in Brazil with over BRL 44 billion in terms of revenue. We understand this partnership can generate great value to both companies and help us move strongly in the personalized learning with increasingly greater personalization in teaching. And also the size and convenience that students want. We understand this can be a powerful leverage for digital, when we talk about education.

Speaking of Inspirali, our medical vertical is growing quite strongly, as Marcelo said. If we compare it with student base currently and the student base late last year, we've had an increase of almost 4-fold, 300% vis-a-vis last year, the net revenue is BRL 463 million, with operating margin above 17%. We also have an important evolution in the ticket reaching an average ticket considering everything, all the scholarships, student loans, et cetera. Considering this ticket, we've reached a ticket close to BRL 7,500.

And we have the potential of getting to more than 15,000 students, 2,000 seats and with geographic operations that is cannot be actually beaten. We have centers in Brazil, Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Divinopolis [indiscernible] important cities like São José dos Campos and other important towns. This is just the charge of our improvement in Inspirali. We have something showing that our certainness in M&A that especially in the past 2 years has given more than relevant importance, more of great focus to operations that could further increase Inspirali.

The next slide, it shows the market how much we're following in integration of assets that have been acquired in May. And how much the work of our work of transformation integration has been proven value generator and also truly important to organize and monitor all the captures that we've estimated in the first 4 months. We have considered in EBITDA, we have BRL 32 million captured in terms of synergies and incremental EBITDA in this period between June and September 2021. Considering their 4 months, if we do simple math of annualizing that, the BRL 32 million would account almost BRL 100 million, getting very close to 30% of our incremental EBITDA that we've informed the market when we had a closing with Laureate BRL 350 million of yearly incremental EBITDA and year 5 post integration. So this is a value that is deflated.

So in our view, the pace of capturing synergies is going very much in line with what we expected, very promising in the year 2022 should bring great news also on this front. Reminding you that we are the road map of systems integration that is very strong with terms of systems program for the turn of the year second round for second half of next year. And this systems integration is also important to generate value with various synergies and various groups of these synergies that make up BRL 350 million of incremental EBITDA for year 5. Therefore, with all of this, our adjusted EBITDA has had quite important growth result of all the movements as mentioned, acquisitions, integrations and synergies. In operating efficiency case, the new scale attained by the company has led our EBITDA in nominal terms, almost to increase almost twofold, and the growth has been even greater than revenue, moving from BRL 310 million to BRL 643 million. Moving forward, over 6% point of margin exceeding 35% margin and the -- accumulated of the first 9 months.

Moving to the last topics, more related to cash that we've always have given importance and even greater in the recent periods, considering the need to generate cash for the deleveraging process, our CapEx trajectory follows coherent with this movement. We see gains of scale, important reduction of over 2% points of CapEx recording revenue moving from 9.3% in the 9 months of 2020 to 7.2%, around 7% of CapEx, and major change in the nature of this CapEx. So increasing role in the digital transformation process generating basis for scale gains, improvement in service, supporting integrations, and smaller representativeness in physical assets, well, furniture and equipment.

As you can see in our release, we have major transfer here to virtualization of laboratories. We have digital transformation that has improved not only the corporate part enabling scale gains, improving services for students, but also working strongly in the improvement of the experience, both academic in and outside the classroom and virtual laboratories with all the experiences that our hybrid model supports us since we train our professors. We've been doing that for 5 years to work in this hybrid model, and this is actually leveraged by the technological tool.

So on the next slide we see cash flow that is quite strong. Cash generation, quite strong. Operating cash generated BRL 532 million accounted for 80% of adjusted EBITDA. No doubt, this is the main leverage. We've always said that from the synergies we're capturing, this is the main lever of deleveraging for the company. The strong cash generation that we managed to obtain in this collective work. But we should not fair to recognize the importance of the initiatives of deleveraging.

If we look at the numbers of this year, we had BRL 180 million in CapEx and BRL 160 million just in the investment of fixed asset with a free cash flow to be higher than the operating cash generation, it was BRL 532 million and net cash generation, BRL 583 million. So the ensemble of these initiatives. So the initiative of deleveraging and also operating cash flow lead us to this positive evolution of our deleveraging process.

We can move to the next slide. On this quarter, we managed to reduce half round of leverage moving from pro forma leverage, considering the assets from Laureate from 4.6 that we disclosed in the past quarter to 4.1 in this period. Remember that actually, our main indices of covenants that were -- that are in the next half next year a 24x. So we should have the continuity of this evolution process of our margins, we should be reassured, we should have a margin that is quite reasonable regarding covenants, with a net debt of about BRL 3 billion -- BRL 3.85 billion.

And as I said, we are extremely attentive and committed and prioritizing the deleveraging agenda bit through operating cash generation and all the initiatives it generates to operations and also with the deleveraging initiatives that in this quarter has been reflected in this operation of this lose back. And we'll have the sales of the assets of the international schools in the South [indiscernible]. And we should also have -- and we are negotiating other initiatives that we have already talked about in previous calls that are at full speed. And I have no doubt that we should have the margin that will be reasonable and comfortable to fulfill with our covenants mid next year.

With this slide, I hand it over to Marcelo, who will wrap up our presentation, so that we can move on to the Q&A. So Marcelo, up to you.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Thank you, Andre, Edu Garcia, Marina. Actually, I wanted to start with this final message, thanking you and greeting our friends in Vivo, this joint venture that is unique. So we have with us the CEO, Alex Salgado, the whole team, greetings to all of you. This partnership is quite important to us, as we've mentioned here. And it is something that is already a reality. We have what to learn, and we were talking about more intelligent classrooms, mixed reality platforms of virtual collaboration, robotics, AI, whatever we have in terms of most modern, so that we can prepare our ecosystem for what we have ahead.

I'd like to thank for our Board of Directors, Mr. Daniel Castanho that has helped us with our committee and lifelong learning. It's important to say that this is an important moment for the company. But I am very proud with the results to grow intake with only 4.9 of our students with some kind of government or private loan is important regarding the choices we made, considering quality, education for the very first day, the choices we made and also considering hybrid education. We have the results at a very important permit. And I would like to say that our return to in-person education, where we're ready since August last year, we were ready, and we've managed -- to be managed to since August this year.

At this moment, we can say that the whole ecosystem has some kind of in-person activity. We have rotation by spaces with greater intensity in health, agrarian and engineering. The whole ecosystem will end this year with in-person experiences. And in '22 first quarter, we're going to have a hybrid offer balancing a new lifestyle that has been catalyzed by the pandemic. In personal use of technology, home and start at the campi, and all our units is already a reality. So I'm sure that this has caused a unique differential that Anima is offering the students in Brazil, especially in higher education.

To conclude, I would like to bring this message that we've written. I would like to give more color to it or light to think that our strategic positioning and a strong resilience at this time that is hard that we never imagined that we would go through that we'll never forget. It's enabling us to see that even with macroeconomic outlook that is uncertain generating uncertainties to the market shows that our proposal is sound is a long-term, consistent and sustainable, giving us even more strength and confidence so that we can follow-on with our strategies outlined with the discipline and execution are very important.

Thank you very much, and let us move on to our Q&A session. Up to you, Marina.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Thank you, Marcelo. Thank you very much. We already have some questions. We have various questions, Andre, that have the same type of content. And I will allow myself to combine some of them. We have questions from Vinicius Figueiredo from Itau BBA, from Yan Cesquim and from Leandro Bastos from Citi. Vinicius, Yan and Leandro, thank you for honoring us and sending your questions. I'm going to combine them.

So Vinicius is asking about PDI provision for doubtful accounts. So we know that this semester we had is specific case in terms of provision. So when the model is 100% implemented, what's the level to think about percentage of revenue? Yes, also regarding PGG or PDA. So with the equalization of accounting methodology between the integrated units, this PDA for the quarter was positive.

What would be the recurring level for the sign going forward? With the delinquency levels improving, would it be fair to expect [Foreign Language] Leandro. Can you comment on the effect of equalization on methodology for PDA? Or what's the recurring level to expect from now on? Thank you, Andre. So it's a provision for doubtful accounts.

[André Tavares, executive]

Thank you very much, Marina. Great questions on a relevant topic. Thank you, Vinicius and Leandro. For the set of questions. Actually, I would say that this topic of the model and the collection model of students that are in default have been important in integrating with the units that came from Laureate.

So we call units being integrated. So the integrated units had a management level and a model of collection that was much higher to what we had been practicing at Anima. We should actually acknowledge that. It's so good that they are now in here and helped us evolve in this topic.

If you look at the integration units, they had a delinquency level and also PDA, they were much lower than what we had at Anima, that were not so high. At Anima, it was already low, but the integration units, they did impressive work on this front. We have already harmonized part of the accounting policies in this quarter to a model that actually has become a model that is more conservative than what we had been practicing at Anima.

However, the collection model of delinquent students has already been implemented. So this was one of the first things that actually was implemented in the integrated units that coming from Anima. So no doubt, we have an effect of improving the management of delinquency and also this PDA.

We have a seasonal effect because of reenrollment taking place in the outnumbered semesters, the third quarter. First and third, this PDA has a reduction due to the renegotiation process and payment of tuition fees in arrears, and we have greater PDA in the even numbered quarters. If we make an effort of annualizing closing -- looking at the closing of the results of 2021, and speaking, based on what would be recurring annualized PDA.

I believe we would get to very close to 4% of our revenue, which is much better than what we closed at Anima last year, remembering 2020 our PDA cost at 6 some percent. All the learning that we've had at the integration units allow us to be very confident that we now start operating at a PDA level of default and PDA below what we had been seeing in the previous year.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Thank you very much, Andre. The next topic is about deleveraging. We have a question from Yan and from Leandro. Yan, asks, we noticed that the pro forma leverage is close to the debt covenants to 2022, which you actually mentioned. What about the other deleveraging initiatives outside the other parts of the company? And Leandro asks whether we can comment how we see the leverage trajectory of the company from now onwards? And if you have other leverages of disinvestment.

[André Tavares, executive]

Well, thank you, Yan and Leandro, for your questions. This deleveraging process is a priority process for us led by Marcelo and myself. And we have been taking very firm steps on this front. I'm not going to be repetitive here. But we've always said that operating cash generation is the main deleveraging source. But based on the initiatives we talked about at the time of the close in with Laureate, we've had 2, and we have 2 underway.

We've fulfilled those that have been dues post these sales-leaseback of the [indiscernible] and the sales of international schools that are not in this number. Good to reinforce that. They're only going to impact the number as of the fourth quarter. And we also have one operation of sales of fixed assets and another operation of sales have been operating assets that are underway being negotiated currently. They are operations that are more sensitive, obviously, for everything that involves sales of assets. And we will give you the market disclosure as soon as we have the closing of the transaction.

I hope in the near future, these operations, they are doing quite well and in line with the values that we have disclosed at the time when we announced the deleveraging plan. I think this is what we can address on the topic. Now knowing that we are, as I said, we have the margins in our projections, we have very comfortable margins to reach half next year or mid next year, June 2022, in a comfortable situation regarding the indices agreed with the banks, which is 4x net revenue on adjusted EBITDA.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Perfect, Andre. We have a question from Yan, that I'm going to combine with the question from Vinicius because I also understand they are related. The last thing Yan asks if we could give you more color to the drop of operating margin in the base block? And Vinicius asks about organic base. So since they are related, I'd like to ask you to cover both topics. Vinicius said, we had a higher level of students graduating this quarter. Should we expect this same trend for the fourth quarter?

[André Tavares, executive]

On the base block, I'd say yes, Vinicius. The year of 2021 is a year which we have a greater number of graduates enters this base block is more mature with more mature courses. We see created difficulty of reestablishing the base.

As I said, we don't have a loss in operating margin, basically due to 2 things. The first is efficiency gain, operational efficiency gain, bringing -- brought by our E2A, our educational system. You've seen how much E2A has been important in capturing operating gains.

And the second topic is the efficiency that we get from the scale gain of the company. A significant part of the management of our regional model has greater impact on those units of the base block. For example, let me take the example of the Minas Gerais regional, Goias and re-addition native states. The greater part of the management infrastructure of that region is at Una and UniBH. They are the base operations. They consume more. They are responsible for the greater part of these resources.

So as we said, as we have other acquisitions in this region as far as the Milton Campos and IBMR in Rio. So other institutions that have joined this regional office, they act positively in the consolidated margin generation. But undoubtedly, the management of those units that is more centered in the base block also have on our model by regional offices.

They also have a major efficiency gain that is not totally captured by the base block, but in the acquisition block because the acquisitions many times do not require a greater management infrastructure because they already use the management infrastructure that comes from the base block. And even with all of this, we still see the base block to keep operating a stable operating margin. Those are results that are very -- that makes us feel very proud and confident knowing that this block has a key role in the full chart or which is the Anima Ecosystem.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Perfect, Andre. We have a question from Vinicius here on dropout rate. So the last point would be dropout. So it had experienced significant improvement in the organic base drop out. But in the recent acquisitions, you had a bit worse level. How doable is it to actually how long will it take for you to see the same levels as the organic?

[André Tavares, executive]

Well, Vinicius, thank you for your questions. This is a topic Marcelo, Marina and Edu know that this is one of the topic -- [Foreign Language] There are several factors. So we have a more flexible financial policy and especially because of the power of our ecosystem, our academic model. [Foreign Language] I would say that is nothing trivial in the scenario we're living in pandemic.

We managed to get quarter-after-quarter to report better levels of student reenrollment. If we consider only the integrated units, you've seen that we managed to evolve 2 points. Dropout rates moving from 9% to 7% of the student base. And the integration units from Laureate, on this point, we have a great learning opportunity because they came with a dropout rate around 11% that gives us this average of 9.5% that we are reporting.

So I would say that quickly, and especially from the next year, we should see lessons learned in these integrated units. The team work in this area, which is the reenrollment, the student experience. It's a team that is very dedicated, very competent, led by our marketing VP, Marcelo Henrik.

So I have no doubt that especially in 2022, we should see a convergence that will be greater between the 2 numbers, dropout of the integrated units with dropout rates with the integrated units. And no doubt, there is a great opportunity for us to be able to continue carrying out increasingly more our purpose of transforming the country with education. And this can only be done with quality and scale. So these 2 this by nominal, I would say, is non-negotiable to us, and we should see very strong convergence along 2022 as all these practices are being harmonized as well.

On the 26, we had a kickoff. The commercial team, marketing, student relationship were no longer talking about integrated -- an integration. Well, it shows that we quickly have these practices to be incorporated to the ecosystem as a whole. As you've evidently mentioned, this is the reason for great pride to us.

It shows that the educational service delivery has been anchored by digital transformation has placed us at a different level, providing educational services. And actually, then our value proposal, the hybrid value proposal and our choice of quality education has been attracting students, keeping the students with us and showing that they increasingly like this.

This is a very important differential for Anima. We've always said that this is not a reason for us to celebrate. We cannot celebrate during pandemic, but certainly, Anima will be strengthened by this process with reinforced choices. This is one of the reasons that shows us that we are on the right track.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Perfect. Thank you, Andre and Marcelo. Marcelo, you've almost introduced the answer to the last question, then I'm going to share with you what we said on our educational proposal, which is from [indiscernible] says the following. How do you see the growth of 100% distance learning cost is leveraged mainly due to the low tuition fees.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

He's worked with us in the Anima Ecosystem. He's working at the reference institution at the region of the Triângulo Mineiro at the Minas Triangle. Well, good question. We've been saying that with Laureate, what came to us is an opportunity, which is digital. They call it digital. It's a robust unit, led brilliantly by a team that we have increasingly been admiring and the leadership of [indiscernible]. And this opportunity is an opportunity of learning.

We are actually looking into this initiative, our Board, our Economic Committee and strategic one has been moving forward, there was an idea and a concept that we Anima didn't have -- we did not make a demand of a large market that is quite important, which is market considering more sensitive income issues. And here, we have an opportunity for us to offer something with quality but more accessible or affordable. This is what we've been learning with this initiative, increasingly moving towards a concept of experiences.

The Anima Ecosystem will have experience for all markets for all initiatives. Perhaps the Anima Ecosystem today is the only ecosystem -- the only network where that probably has to provide experiences and various initiatives with higher or lower use of technology, getting to an initiative that is 100% digital, 100% with the use of technology with the quality we're believing, that is. This is what we have seen. Okay. We have been working quite strongly towards it.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Thank you, Marcelo. With this, we have ended all our questions. And in a British timing, we end. Okay. On the Dutch, very sharply. Thank you, Edu. Thank you, Marcelo. Thank you the whole IR team that has worked a lot with this release. Thank you to the communications team.

To the interpreter, and we wish you all a great day. The IR team is readily available to all of you. Have an excellent day and an excellent rest of the week. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Greetings to all of you. Have a great week.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]